


Running

by evil_bunny_king



Series: Of the Sun [8]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Porn With Plot, Spoilers for 'Here Lies the Abyss', post-Adamant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-04-26 13:57:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5007355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/evil_bunny_king
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An aftermath, following ‘Here Lies the Abyss’. It is their first night in Adamant after the siege and Solas struggles to comprehend what he almost lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He walks her to her assigned quarters. Helps ease the bulky coat from her shoulders, fills a basin from the bath steaming gently in the corner, and kneels before her to unpeel crude bandages, wiping dried blood and dirt away to press glowing fingertips against her skin. She trembles slightly as he cleans each one, silent, resting her head on his shoulder. Her fingers wind themselves into the cords of his coat.

So he listens to the regular rhythm of her breaths as he works. Traces the firm column of her neck with the cooling rag, tastes the slick of salt and blood on her skin, as he presses his lips against the claw marks fading there.

_She hadn’t followed._

When they’d fled from Nightmare towards the rift, were spat out like seed husks amongst the martyrs and Inquisition soldiers alike – she’d simply been - gone. The bristle of the anchor at his back. The pant of her breaths. An echo of absence as he’d staggered across the courtyard, fighting to keep his feet, to spin and find her amidst the crowd.

But the rift had remained still. Crackled against the overcast sky, yawned: empty.

As if she had never taken breath and filled the ruins of this world with a life. One that burned as much as it built, somehow regathering the shattered pieces of a being that had not opened his eyes since crystal spires had splintered between his fingers and for the agonising minutes that had stretched with the fact of her absence he had… he…

He bends his thoughts back to her. Focuses on wiping the blood from her jaw, on soothing the tension that clenched there- placing a kiss in the magic’s wake, as well, as if the lingering touch could ease the hollows from her gaze.

She is tired, burdened by more than just the exactings of the anchor. Bowed by the burden of choice: ideals betrayed and the man left behind, a few of the many calculated losses that litter the history of great movements and great change.

A shudder. As if she hears him she inches forward, burrows chill hands inside his coat, measuring her breaths in an attempt to control her shivers and he lets her, ignoring the shock of her cold touch, ignoring the way his hand trembles, too, as it curves gently against her nape.

He presses his lips against her hair.

This will change her, for all that she chose well. He is proud of her. He mourns (for what she is, what she used to be); he marvels at what she is becoming. She is mortal, broken beyond what she knows and that should mean more - but recently that fact has been so easy, too easy, to simply _forget_.

He pulls away and tends a gash along her brow, cleaning the trail of blood from her cheek. Weaves magic into the wound.

“Solas.”

She has trailed her fingers up to his collar as he’d healed her, utilising his distraction, and now she latches them around his neck, using the contact to tug him to face her. He meets her gaze – surprisingly alert – and finds himself caught.

“You are injured, vhenan,” he admonishes, wrapping one of his hands around hers. He can’t bring himself to pull away, though – his fingers intertwine with hers, holding tight. “Please, allow me to finish.”

Her gaze doesn’t falter – he sees himself reflected in their hazel depths, sees the way the flecks of amber smoulder around the pupils.

“That can wait.”

She shifts on her perch until she can smooth both hands back past his shoulders, draw him between her legs, and he yields despite himself, although he finishes reknitting the wound as he moves, smoothing his thumb against the healing skin.

She goes to speak- but then she pauses, eyelids flickering, and her gaze sweeps down, away, and back, scanning his features.

He tracks the movement of her gaze and wonders how much she sees. The scars of his thoughtless youth, perhaps. The millennia that have hollowed his cheeks, carved themselves into the corners of his mouth-

The words of the nightmare rise unbidden into his thoughts and he frowns. _Harellan._ A petty irony, as crudely apt as a demon was wont and yet - she wouldn’t have failed to catch the term. It had been planted for her ears alone.

What is she thinking? How far does she wonder?

She takes a breath and a certain kind of dread stirs in his chest.

“Who were you, before this?”

His heart catches in his throat - she breaks away from her scrutiny to blink at him, surprised – and it is only then that he realises that words are his own.

She gives him a lopsided, tired smile, fingers toying with the ruff of his coat. Her eyes don’t leave his – and his pulse is a tripping rhythm in his ears, a buzzing against the distant clamour of the keep.

“You’ve asked me something similar before.”

So he had. He gives a low laugh, casting his gaze down. “That is true. However, I am not attempting to comprehend your unprecedented insight this time.”

A crinkle of a laugh, expressed in her eyes alone.

“Why do you ask, then?”

_Why had he?_

The question was unbidden, although he can guess at the motivation – a dangerous mix of wonder and fear, the longing for connection, the stinging anticipation of the blade hovered over the neck.

She would ask after harellan, had been about to – as was her right, but he- couldn't. Not like this. But- then again.  _maybe_ , if only he-

A half-truth in the meanwhile.

“You can only attempt to understand where an individual is going if you know from whence they came.”

She toys with his collar again, toys with him, asking her next question while glancing at him beneath lowered lashes.

“ _Am_ I going somewhere?”

He smiles, feeling the motion crack through his exhaustion, ignorant of the cares that laid it there.

“You’re the appointed Inquisitor and have just seized the fortress of a renowned military cult, storming the fabric of reality in the process. Some would say such feats preclude inaction.”

She concedes with a gust of breath. It's almost grudging, her grip loosening around his collar. “That is true, of course.” First her eyes lower, and then her hands, sliding down his neck to his chest. “As always, you are right.”

There is a sadness, there, bared beneath the words. “Is that such a surprise?”

She scoffs lightly at that, as he’d hoped, lingering in this loose embrace for a moment, before with suppressed but evident effort releasing him to drag herself upright. She pauses only to smooth the wrinkles from his charred undershirt, regardless of its ruin, and shuffles more firmly into her seat, straightening her spine, establishing an effective distance between them once more.

Her knees remain pressed gently into his sides, though. His hand is enclosed in hers.

“So.” She levels him with an expectant look. Amusement lingers in the slant of her mouth and the warmth of her words. “Your question. To be frank, it’s a little broad at present.” She taps her forefinger against his knuckle, twice. “Care to elucidate?”

He pulls their joined hands towards himself, seeking out the bite marks he’d spotted there and thinks.

“I asked how you came to be the person you are.” He turns the hand back and forth, tracing the lines of her wrist. “Logically, therefore, there would be only one way to proceed. From the beginning.”

There is a way he can broach the subject of interest. It would generate a new snare of half-truths and omissions, yes, but still _truth_ , if she could be led to ask for it.

“The beginning? Such as my childhood?”

He finds the bite lodged below the thumb joint, bound with a fraying rag, and quickly tugs the bandage free, probing it with a new cast of magic. “If relevant.”

A snort. “That’s really what you’re starting with?”

“Indulge me.”

She hisses as he soaks the wound, shifting as he settles the healing magics into the submerged flesh, although her posture remains (stubbornly) firm. She remasters herself with a laugh.

“Fine. I will. If I must.” A pause, marked by a comfortable movement. He braces himself.

But it stretches and a new huff of laughter brushes his chin. “…Ask, then, _vhenan_.”

Her gaze is steady, even as he meets it, his eyebrows raising. “No provisos, inquisitor? No bargaining, nothing to request in return?”

She smiles crookedly. Wrinkles her nose, oddly enough. “No. Or just the one, perhaps.”

He smiles expectantly, even as his stomach tightens, that cold fear resettling in his chest. But he has delayed it too long-  “And what would you ask of me?"

“That, tonight…” a breath. “I am no longer the inquisitor. Herald. Anything. Just Abora. And you - are just Solas. Tonight we can be just  _us_.”

He blinks at her.

She gives him a small quirk of a smile, more genuine than her others, and after a moment, almost as afterthought, adds: “please.”

His mind is reeling. She won’t ask?

But -  _why?_

He is seized by the sudden urge to lurch across the space between them and shake her hunched shoulders, as if he could dislodge the answers he sought that way.

The implications of the nightmare plagued her, he'd seen that; it had been only worsened by his evasions, he knew that too  _and yet…_

He takes a breath. It trembles in his chest, in the exhale, a kind of disappointment lacing the release. He sees her eyes track the movement, linger on his lips, flick back to his gaze. Had he misjudged her? Misjudged the moment, their moments, the closeness between the two of them-?

And then he considers her. Observes the steadiness of her gaze, her folded hands, retrieved and placed neatly in her lap. The careful distance she’d placed between them.

No.

Not a lack of interest. Of care. Nor a willful ignorance. Exhausted she may be, but the thought behind her decision is evident- and it is a decision, he realises.

One made with an understanding, or at least a respect, for regret and past pain. Made with trust, in the man she knows, in who he is now, and with that compassion of hers-

Even though she doesn’t know the extents of what she is forgiving - of what she is accepting. Even though she couldn’t - can’t - know.

A warmth sweeps through him. Creeps up his neck, settles lightly over his cheeks, unfolding like a balm for his wearied mind. She seems to catch the shift, something relaxing in her features, softening in the line of her mouth and he- he shouldn’t accept this. She deserves _more_  and the torrent of words is a swell on his tongue, balanced, poised to spill forth - return the offering- accept what she gives, what you take too freely, and damn the rest for maybe – maybe, she can understand. Maybe - it could be different.

But he.

He _can’t._

He forces himself to swallow. Returns her smile.

It is a slow, silly thing.

“Ma nuvenin… Abora.”

Her smile widens, creasing the scar that courses down her left cheek, that is as much a part of her as the freckles that scatter the bridge of her nose, and he feels himself sink further into that mire of tenderness, as wretched and undeserving of it as he is.

He wonders how long this kindness will linger, after. How many truths it will stomach before it is shredded as the anchor shreds its way through her flesh, gnawing on more than muscle and nerve.

A touch to his cheek. He jolts, refocuses, meeting eyes turned grey by the shadows of the dying candle, that peer into his own.

“ _Vhenan._ ” That words from her lips- “Your question?”

He takes a breath. Returns to their small corner of the fortress, the damp must of the scavenged room- the woman before him, shivering in the steam of an abandoned bath. He laughs. Draws her closer. Draws her into a conversation about her family, as he hunts down her wounds once more, tracing soft kisses and soft magic in their wake.

_Just Solas._

He wishes he could, vhenan.

Oh how he wishes he could.


	2. Linger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The NSFW conclusion (which I didn't mean to write and then totally did).

Their conversation has subsided into silence by the time Solas unearths the last of Abora’s wounds. He notes those that will require more attention in the morning - hesitating, perhaps, as he unwraps her foot-wraps - but at length draws himself away, rising to his feet.

He has lingered too long, already. There is - more, that he wants, more that he wants to give, but he has indulged himself enough of an evening. They both need - rest. The clarity of sleep.

He takes a moment to look at her. She seems so soft, there: eyes half-mast from the exertions of the healing, her hands loose and warm around one of his own. But he gathers the bowl. The rag. Smooths a hand over her hair, ignoring the dust and grime caught in the strands, and places another kiss upon her brow before moving to leave.

He takes barely a step, though, before one of those warm hands latch onto his elbow, tugging him back.  
  
The move is already too familiar.  
  
“Please. Stay.”

She asks it of him quietly, looking him straight in the eye when he turns. She will not beg, nor would he expect her to - but there is an edge of something in her voice: a rawness that he recognises, ragged and earnest beneath her exhaustion. It is quickly hidden by a wink as she works up a smile, flashing her teeth. “Join me, even. There’s more than room enough for two in that tub. I’m sure we’ll find a way accommodate.”  
  
The proposition surprises a laugh from him, and her smile stretches broader in turn, breaking into a grin. But it is the motivation behind the request he considers. He gazes at her another moment. Traces the pain wrought into features he’d tried so hard to ease, looks past it to her, worn and beautiful in the candle light.  
  
“Alright,” he finds himself saying and her grin smooths back into one of those more brilliant smiles of hers - full featured, glad, and he is - making another choice, he realises. As potentially damning as his last, but it is _his_ and so - he accepts.  
  
“Alright,” she parrots, her hand slipping into his, and her grip is firm and so very real as she slips to her feet, tugging him towards the tub, glancing back at him the whole way.  
  
He follows.  
  
The claw-footed basin is settled beneath the room’s sole lit sconces. Wax drips from candles sagging into their holders, cascading slowly down their sides, and Abora passes under their flickering light to play her fingers across the tub rim, nails tip-tapping against the metal.

But the water is long since cold.

She halts to frown at it. Bends, dipping her free hand below the surface- and suddenly it’s not her expression he’s watching but the curve of her neck, the long lengths of her back as she dips, her still-damp undershirt dragging across her skin.  
  
He flicks his gaze back up, away, to find her smiling at him again - slowly, languidly this time, her eyes dark. His breath catches.

She straightens, turning to face him, stepping lightly closer until she can rest her wet hand lightly against his chest.  
  
He feels it through the weight of his coat.  
  
“The water’s cold,” she informs him, tapping her forefinger.  
  
He smiles - reaches past her for the tub, stirs his fingers within. His pulse is a lazy beat in his ears. “Unfortunate. Thankfully, I know a remedy.”  
  
It’s a simple magic: a twist of entropy, energy slipping through the veil, but she hums as light unspools from his palm, pleased and soft, and the sound of it curls behind his ribs.  
  
“Useful.” Her voice teases around the compliment. “I may have to keep you.”

“Apostates do have infinite value.”

She seeks his gaze, closing her fingers to grip the edge of his coat. “I would, though.”

And there again is her glimmer of honesty – purposefully given, this time: broken edges and earnest truth.  
  
He huffs another laugh and breaks from her gaze. “You should be more careful with your confessions. They carry the air of promises.”  
  
She merely quirks her eyebrow, undaunted; tilts her head to the side to recapture his gaze. “I didn’t say it wasn’t one.”  
  
They look at each other. The hand on his chest slides up slowly, smoothing to his neck, and she meets his raised eyebrow, expression laid deliberately open.

The spell comes to an end, glow petering back into shadow.  
  
He’s the one that moves first.  
  
A step. Breath released through his nose and joined grip pressed against his chest and then he dips to place a kiss against her mouth, his hand smoothing across her waist to the small of her back, chasing that smile. The kiss deepens as her lips mould against his, finding his lower lip, sucking, and he cannot hide the soft sound that leaves him, the way his hand tightens around hers.  
  
He jolts when he realizes that her hands have slipped free and are working on the toggles of his armoured coat, unbuttoning them as her mouth moves against his, tongue flicking teasingly past his lips.  
  
“Abora,” he breathes, and she meets his eye again, gaze bright in the dim light.  
  
“Is this alright?” she asks, and he almost laughs again – because he has a feeling it isn’t, not really, not for her and certainly not for himself, but nonetheless it still _is_ and so he answers her with another kiss, sinking into her gentle demands. The final buttons are a simple thing, nimble fingers slipping the garment from his shoulders, and he catches the coat before it hits the floor, tossing it with a clatter towards the corner where they’d left their boots. He’s uncaring, impatient - but when he turns back to her she  _smiles_.  
  
“Much better,” she says, smoothing a hand up his dishevelled undershirt and then she draws him in again, tipping forward on her toes, her mouth sweet against his own.  
  
His hands tug and she breaks away to let him pull her tunic up and over her head, baring warm skin to candle light and his questing hands. He chases the hem, smiling as she shivers beneath his touch, groaning as she tilts her head back, her eyes slipping closed, and he dips to trace old words against the soft stretch of her neck – entreaties both preserved and forgotten and her shudder is his own, joint heartbeat loud at his breast.

 _I would keep you_ , he whispers into her skin, biting as her hips roll flush against his own. _My heart – I would give what little I have left if you would only stay, Abora Lavellan, for all the aeons that stretch before us._

Her pulse flutters beneath his mouth, her breath catching as his thumbs slip beneath the edge of her breast-band before she draws him back to her mouth once more - tongue and heat and the salt of sweat on their lips, new and known all at once.

Their clothing is discarded in increments. Chased by wandering fingers, wicked mouths - when she sinks at last into the steaming waters a soft sound pulls from her lips and he waits barely a moment before he pursues, settling in behind her and caging her within his legs - pulling the tip of her ear between his teeth to draw out that sound again.

She is a reality in his arms and he would _keep her._

“Solas,” she breathes, chuckling breathlessly as his hand slips between her thighs, her own resting over his knees beneath the water and gripping as he strokes her, teasing. She jolts when his fingers dip to circle in tightly, another laugh falling from her lips and his other hand slides to her breast, relishing the way she arches into him.

“You are beautiful,” he murmurs into her ear, hand working languidly, but surely. She moans softly, a flush creeping across her collarbones, and she is - stunning, unravelling in his arms like this – the harsh lines loosening from her shoulders, a different tension trembling through her limbs. He drags his lips down the curve of her ear. Lingers, bites at the juncture of her neck – he is hard and straining against the small of her back but this, her, is all that he wants.

“Solas,” she whispers again, rich around a breath and he rolls her nipple between his fingers, groaning as she grinds her hips into his hand.

“ _I have you, vhenan_ ,” he tells her in elven. She hums at the words, understood this time even though he speaks too fast, too lost in the image of her– she twists her head as she strains against his hand, lip caught in her teeth, and his breath hisses from him as if he’s been struck. He feels almost dizzy, his pulse hammering in his ears; she _moans_. “ _I have you, ma lath. You are magnificent and I do not deserve you, but I love you - ena tel’dar, I want to see you. Come undone for me.”_

“Solas,” she gasps; “faster” and she bites her lips to muffle her cry as he complies, his own hips twitching as she rolls into his hand. Her chest heaves, breaths quickening, back tightening – he holds her against him, feels her tense as the swell crests. “More – there, yes, ah, yes, Solas-”

She tips her head back against his shoulder as she comes, sighing his name, her eyelashes fluttering as he carries her through it and he groans and presses kisses into her hair, against her temple, drunk on the sight of her. The blush against her cheeks, the way her thighs clench, trembling, her nails digging into his skin – he draws his hands up to cup her face as she relaxes and captures her bitten lips, slowly, lazily, the hazy kisses of sated desire and tender affection.

He could lie here for decades and it would still not be enough, he thinks.

But she does not remain idle for long. After a moment she breaks from his grip, sloshing water onto the floor as she wriggles around to face him, pressing his legs gently into the water as she goes, and he huffs a breathless laugh as she settles herself on his lap, unbearably close and yet _not close enough_.

“Vhenan,” he tries, hands grazing around her waist – to hold her back or draw her in, he isn’t quite certain anymore – but as she smooths a hand down his abdomen his voice breaks away; shudders, as her grip firms around him, and he can only breathe as she takes him and strokes, thoughts disintegrating into the steam.

Her gaze burns into his. Blazes, as she drinks in the sight of him beneath her, smouldering as her caresses coils sparks beneath his tight skin. She dips to mouth his jaw, a hand rising to trace the curve of his ear and he groans.

But-

“ _I want to feel you_ ,” he whispers, staying her hand with a light touch. “ _I want to be inside you, vhenan.”_

She swallows. Her face is so close to his own, pupils wide and dark, and he watches as she takes the sight of him in, hand slipping to his cheek. She looks into him, bared before her in ways he cannot hide and no longer wants to and for once - he doesn’t fear what she sees.

An emotion he doesn’t dare to name lurks in the softness of her eyes. Hides, in the curling corners of her mouth.

And when she nods he cannot restrain the sound that leaves him as he slips a hand between her thighs and presses his fingers into her liquid heat.

She rolls against his hand with a sigh, trembling, and what sense of restraint he has fractures. He leans forward, clutching her closer as his fingers work steadily into her, curling and stretching and her kiss is almost feral as she bends to meets him, framing his cheeks with clutching hands. She bites at his mouth. Her palms curl, smoothing to his temples and nails scratching at his scalp and her moan shivers through both of them as she arches against him, opening to his touch.

She is the one that pulls his hand away and draws him in, taking him with a gasp. She is the one that locks their gazes, fierce and beautiful and sinking into his every thrust and he loses himself in the throes and the heat, the enormity of her breaking, shattering in his arms.

And when she comes again he follows.

He gasps into the curve of her shoulder. Clutches her tight against him – too tight, he is afraid he’s hurting her but she only clutches him back and they ride out the tight waves of bliss together, crests of stars and impossible constellations and sparks that spiral through the steam around them. For a moment he believes they are weightless. Indivisible. Light and heat and the burn of their skin, where they flow from one into the other.

When it releases them they subside back into each other and their forgotten bath. Breathless, heavy limbed and she laughs through her pants, that tired, content laughter that he loves so much.

“Mm.” She nuzzles into the side of his neck and snorts at her own eloquence. “That was… Mm.”

He chuckles, raising a heavy hand to smooth slowly down the curve of her back.

“That was indescribable,” he finishes for her, a little more softly than he’d intended.

She shifts in his lap, withdrawing herself from him and he cannot restrain his note of complaint, a part of him reaching after her. It is appeased when she twists to curl against his chest instead, though. As she tucks her head beneath his chin, arms looping loosely around him, and sighs, pressing her ear over his heart.

They lay there and simply breathe, a while. Watch as the steam dissipates towards the ceiling, their heartbeats easing, the warm comfortable weight of her rising and falling with each breath.

Eventually, she cranes her head up to look at him. The worries that had haunted her features since she’d re-emerged from the fade have finally eased, he notices, and her expression is clear, smiling as she blinks up at him.

“If we don’t move soon, the water’s going to get cold again,” she notes. Her hand has raised to rest against his bicep and it draws lazy patterns up his forearm, apparently delighting in the goose-pimples that raise in its trail. “Loathe as I am to say it, we may have to bathe at some point.”

The water ripples around his laugh, splashing gently against the sides of the tub and, indeed, it is becoming colder as the evening grows late. He cups the back of her head. Rifles his thumb through the short hairs of her neck as she sighs into his touch, and indulges in a smile of his own.

“I suppose we should,” he muses, but he doesn’t move, and neither does she.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First time writing smut. Teehee. Success?
> 
> [Wizbot - Sea of Bees](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8lFBekxbJc) was my jam for this. I love this song. :')

**Author's Note:**

> [AURORA - Runaway](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_HlPboLRL8)


End file.
